The Road To Hell
by Poison's Ivy
Summary: Oliver wakes up and finds himself in an alternate life where he isn't The Hood. Set after 2.06. Olicity!


**Title: The Road To Hell  
****Summary: **Oliver wakes up and finds himself in an alternate life where he isn't The Hood. Set after 2.06.  
**Rating: K+  
****Pairing: **Olicity, my new one true OTP.

**SPOILERS AHEAD. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN EPISODE 2.06, Keep Your Enemies Closer! **

* * *

"_Because of the life that I lead… I just think that it's better to not… be with someone that I could __**really**__ care about" – Oliver Queen, "Keep Your Enemies Closer"_

With a loud gasp and a shudder that ran down his entire body, he jumped off the bed, the blankets falling onto the floor, gulping for air as his heart thumped heavily in his chest. With wild eyes and his body in a defensive stance, he scanned the entire room for possible enemies or sudden attackers when he realized that he was in his bedroom.

_Just a nightmare_, he thought, glancing around the room one more time before sitting back onto the bed. As the mattress dipped under his weight, all Oliver could think about was that dream. He's had horrible and terrifying nightmares from his time on the island yet _that_ moment that wouldn't stop replaying in his mind, when he could see the disappointment in Felicity's eyes and the last thing he wanted to do was _let her down_.

He wasn't even in a relationship with her, yet he somehow managed to find a way to mess up the one honest, real connection he had with a female in his life. With a groan, he leaned back into the bed and stared at the ceiling.

Every time he closed his eyes, all he could remember was the regret he felt at sleeping with Isabel. It was… It was _nothing_. It _meant_ nothing. Yet it felt like he ruined something precious when he saw Felicity's face and the feeling wouldn't stop lingering in his gut.

Sighing, knowing sleep would be pointless now, Oliver stood up from the bed and head to his bathroom. Maybe he could go to Verdant and get a good workout to take away the shaking nerves.

At least he was going to do so, until he heard the sink running.

The animal in him came alive as he quieted his footsteps and walked closer to the door while hiding in the shadows. He placed his hand on the doorknob and was ready to attack whoever was behind it when the door suddenly opened and he had his fist only inches away from Felicity Smoak's face.

"Oliver! What are you doing?" she asked, almost calm but he could see the telltale signs of her nervousness behind her blinking eyes and slightly shaking hands.

He put his fist down and took a second to fully process that _Felicity_, a.k.a. the woman who had been giving him the silent treatment when she wasn't referring to him as "Mr. Queen" and doing everything she could to avoid being alone with him, was in his _bathroom_. In his house. _In the middle of the night_.

"Felicity?" he asked, just making sure. He hadn't had hallucinations since the island but this couldn't be real.

She chuckled and ran a hand through her hair that was out of its usual ponytail, "Well yea who else could I be? Well I mean I guess I could be a doppelgänger from another dimension but that could be me watching too much television, not that I have time to watch television because you still don't know how to organize anything so I'm too busy doing that…" she looked up at him aghast, "_Not_ that you are a bad organizer or anything. Even though you are but that's why you have me—"

He interrupted her rambling and wrapped his arms around her upper frame. This was his Felicity. His babbling friend who could talk a mile a minute, who apparently was no longer ignoring him in favor of staring at Google on her tablet.

And he had her again. He had her.

The feeling of relief disappeared and a weight dropped down to his stomach as he realized that she was still in his bathroom in the middle of the night _in his house_ and the last thing he could remember was Felicity getting a ride home with Diggle just so that Oliver wouldn't escort her to her car.

"Oliver, are you okay?" she asked him, his arms still around her until he let her go and looked at her.

She was… She was in sweatpants and a tee shirt, with her hair down and her glasses framed on her face. Did she stay over? Did he invite her?

_Why was she here?_

Felicity waved a hand in front of his face, "Oliver? Maybe you need to go back to sleep. You have a board meeting tomorrow and this look on your face…"

"Board meeting?" he asked as he tried to replay the events from last night in his head to see if there was a significant point in the night when he invited Felicity to apparently _sleep at his house_.

No. Nothing. This wasn't good.

Felicity raised an eyebrow at his questioning tone, "The meeting with Stellmoor International? Their C.E.O. is a soul devouring harpy whose rampant business-gobbling has left hundreds out of a job?" she looked at him and it seemed like his face told her he had no idea what she was talking about because she gave up on trying to explain it to him.

Suddenly her hands were on his face, his cheeks, moving up to meet his forehead where she placed her small palm against his skin and all he could feel was _her_, but the rush of cold air met him seconds later when she removed her hand.

"Doesn't feel like you have a fever… Let's get you back into bed anyways. You're usually not this forgetful."

He didn't hear her really, because his mind was still processing the fact that he felt a band on her finger, on her left hand, as she was lightly grazing his cheek with her nails and it took everything he had to not grab her hand and look for it.

It wasn't until she was leading him back into his bed, _their bed_ it seemed as he realized she placed herself next to him while placing the covers over both of them, that he noticed the glint of light coming from her hand.

It was a ring. An engagement ring on the fourth finger on her left hand.

This had to be a dream. A prank, even. Except Felicity would never joke about something as serious as being engaged to him, not after Russia.

Yet as he rested his head against the pillow he couldn't stop staring at her hand, couldn't stop staring at the sight of her in his bed, her blonde hair fanning over his pillows.

Felicity noticed his staring because she propped herself on one elbow and faced him with a curious look. "Hey…"

"_Hey…"_

"What's going on?"

"_Because of the life I lead…"_

"You look…" she frowned, "Lost."

"_I just think that it's just better to not be with someone I could really care about."_

But here he was, in bed with a woman he never dreamed of being with in a more romantic relationship.

Maybe he was reading too much into this. Maybe she was just… just doing this as a friend. In bed with him to … To help him sleep? Engaged to another man?

Except the thought of that crushed his chest and made him want to break bones.

This couldn't be happening. It… It had to be a dream. And if it was, his brain was crueler than he could have ever imagined because he would take being stabbed and shot every night than feel this way. Confused, disoriented and being so close to Felicity in a way he hadn't been before.

"I'm…" he looked at her face and couldn't imagine this being a dream because the details were so _real_, "I'm not sure really."

Felicity tilted her head, almost to analyze him, and he couldn't help but raise his hand and place it on her cheek. Her skin felt so _warm_ under his fingertips, her breath fanning over his fingers…

_This was real._ And in that moment he wished nothing more than for the last few weeks to be a dream and for this to be genuine, for this to be real.

She placed her own hand on top of his, and her bare fingers curled over his own and tightened against his hand.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked quietly, knowing that he was usually very private. He did, but at the same time he didn't because talking about this might explain why she had a ring on her finger and was in bed with him and even though it seemed like the obvious, life wasn't that good to him. He didn't want to risk it being the wrong answer…

But he had to know.

"… What's the last thing you remember?" he asked quietly, his voice taking a more vulnerable tone but he didn't care about that right now.

She looked at him curiously but humored him, "Um… we had dinner with your mom, Thea and Roy, and Diggle couldn't make it even though he wished he could have but you know, he has a girlfriend now so you told him to go enjoy his own life and basically kicked him out", she smiled at him, "Which was kinda sweet of you since he's been working overtime making sure we were safe."

That made no sense. Diggle knew he could take care of himself and Felicity, which made him realize that his family knew Felicity…

Which had to mean that the ring… he looked at her again, was _his_. He ignored the warmth in his chest and tried to focus on what she was saying.

"Then we watched a movie, and uh, went to bed. Which you weren't really happy about because um, ya know, you wanted to do _more_ than that but I don't want that Isabel Rochev to catch us off our guard just because we were _tired_", she said with a sheepish smile and a knowing glance.

… The last thing _he_ remembered was tying some gangbangers upside down for Officer Lance to find, before heading back to the Foundry and not knowing how to talk to Felicity.

_What was going on?_

"… Oliver?"

Licking his lips Oliver looked at her again. He gripped her hand that was still encased in his and closed his eyes for a few seconds before opening them again and forcing himself to face this.

"Felicity…" he said softly, not wanting to hurt her more than it inevitably would, "… I don't remember any of that."

The look on her face, the confusion the pain the _disappointment_, it was Russia all over again and this time it would hurt even more because he already had a glimpse of what could be and he didn't want to leave it. Unknowingly, he gripped her hand tighter.

Felicity looked down at him, slowly removing her hand from his to replace both her palms on his face as she cupped his cheeks and sat down on the bed.

"What's the last thing you remember?" she asked softly.

"… Suiting up. Fighting. Taking down some gang responsible for smuggling drugs into the city…" Just by looking at her face he knew this was the wrong answer. She looked even more confused.

"Oliver… You were with me the entire night", she said as Oliver grew still. How could he have fought crime if he was with her the whole night?

"And… suiting up? … As what? Why were you fighting?" she asked quietly. And suddenly Oliver got the chills. Felicity didn't know of his life as the Hood. As Arrow. Whatever. Who was this imposter and _where was she?_

He detached himself from her as fast as he could and Felicity had to run to catch up to him while he was leaving the room.

"Oliver!" she said, placing a hand on his elbow before turning him around and looking at him with a confused expression. "What's going on?"

"Did I even go to the island?" he asked, trying to contain his anger so that he wouldn't wake up his whole family, "Is my father still alive?" Was everything else so messed up that he couldn't even remember becoming the man who would right his father's wrongs and save his city?

Felicity looked at him with those softening eyes and he already knew the answer.

"Oliver…" she said, slowing pulling him closer to her, "… Your father died nine years ago when the Queen's Gambit was lost at sea."

He gulped as he tried to remember his life as The Hood but it was almost fading away from him, as if it had never been real. What else couldn't he remember?

"Was I shipwrecked on that island?" he asked, his voice turning hollow.

Felicity glanced at his chest and slowly placed her hands over his shirt, and he could feel her outlining some of the scars that lined his abdomen. "For five years."

They stood there quietly, with Felicity outlining his scars and with him looking at her anew.

"How did we meet?" he whispered, almost broken. He couldn't imagine a life without The Hood, a life that introduced him to Felicity in the first place.

Felicity looked up at him with tears in her eyes, and he knew that this had to be real because he found another way to hurt her despite everything she had done for him.

She gulped and Oliver could see that she was doing her best to stay strong in front of him because he needed her, and it ached at his chest.

"Um… Walter introduced us", she said while trying to hide the sobs coming from her throat. "He recruited me when I graduated M.I.T. and after you came home, he introduced us so that I could help you assimilate into the world of technology…" She looked up at him again. "He wanted you to be able to take your rightful place as C.E.O. and… now we're here", she said with a sad smile.

Here… Engaged and in a life where The Hood didn't exist and he was literally just Oliver Queen, C.E.O.

Slowly Oliver placed his hands on her shoulders and brought her closer to him, letting her wrap his arms around her and dig her head into his chest.

If he wasn't The Arrow, then that meant that his father never gave him the list. Then … what of his memories of the last few years as the vigilante? Dreams? Could he really have dreamt all of that? He looked down at the blonde head of hair in his arms and knew that the only person capable of figuring out what was going on with him was in his arms and very tired.

"C'mon", he whispered to her, scooping her into his arms and carrying her towards the bed. "We'll talk about this in the morning… Just get some rest."

He placed her onto the mattress underneath the covers and before he could move, she grabbed his wrist with her left hand that sparkled in the streams of moonlight coming from the window, and held it in place.

"We'll figure out what's going on Oliver. Don't worry", she said determinedly. He smiled at her, knowing she would do whatever it took to get to the bottom of this. Slowly, he got into bed with her and brought her closer to him, trying to memorize the feel of her and the warmth she emitted.

Felicity waited until he was lying on his back facing the ceiling again to stretch over him and place her lips over his.

He slowly sunk into the kiss and put a hand behind her head to bring her closer to him, and he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him _and he never wanted this to end_.

She picked her head up and smiled at him. "Now… _get some rest_."

"I don't want to sleep", he said with a rasp, and despite the double meaning they both knew what he meant. He wanted to stay here, like this, with her, for the rest of eternity if he could.

Felicity smiled. "Close your eyes. Go to sleep. I'll be here in the morning", she said lovingly, and then reached down to give a ghost of a kiss over his lips and he wanted nothing more than that moment to last.

Oliver tightened his grip over her waist and pulled her closer to him, before closing his eyes and falling asleep.

When he woke up, he smiled, feeling refreshed and better than he had in a long time, and he looked to his right to find the woman who made him feel this way.

… Except she was nowhere to be found. Oliver frowned. Looking outside, the sky was just turning red and he knew that Felicity didn't like to be woken up before sunrise. (He had called her once and found out the hard way.) Was she in the bathroom again?

He got out of bed quickly and with a quick glance around the room he walked into the bathroom, but found it devoid of any female products or the scent of Felicity's shampoo that he smelled last night when she was coming out of the bathroom. Oliver gulped and closed his eyes tightly, before turning back to look at his bed even though he had strong suspicions of something missing.

The right side of his bed was still made, just like it was last night before he went to bed.

His heart felt heavy in his chest. Dragging himself to his desk, Oliver picked up his phone and pressed the speed dial for Felicity.

Four rings later, she picked up.

"Oliver?" she asked groggily, "What time is it? Why are you calling before 7 am? Don't you know I need my sleep after working two jobs for you?"

Her irritability in the mornings didn't faze him. All he could think about was how she would be here in the morning, as he realized that his brain was far crueler to him than he could ever imagine.

"Yeah…" he said quietly. "I'm sorry."

He could feel the words echo in his chest.

"… Is everything okay? Is there green business we have to get to?"

Right. The Hood. Arrow. _Whatever_.

"…No. Just wanted to say good morning", he said softly, as something threatened to rip inside his chest and he pursed his lips and kept quiet about all the things he really _did_ want to say.

"Um… Okay. Good morning then."

He couldn't do this right now. This wasn't how he wanted to talk to her.

"I'll see you later Felicity." He hung up the phone and quietly walked back to his empty bed, where all he could see and hear and feel was _Felicity_.

He sat down on the mattress and could feel the mattress dip under him just like it did last night_, no_, just like it did in his _dream_.

Now that he knew what it felt like, Oliver didn't know how he would manage to stay away from her.

He knew that … that the _real _Felicity was still disappointed in him for sleeping with Isabel. She thought he could be better than that, be with someone better than Isabel and somehow Oliver knew that Felicity wasn't referring to herself.

Oliver frowned, but made a promise to himself. He would get Felicity back. Bring her back to where they were and maybe even move forward when the time was right. He couldn't let their… relationship die because of an _oversight_.

But that would have to wait until morning hit. Till then, Oliver leaned back onto his pillow and closed his eyes, willing and wishing for that dream to come back to him again.

* * *

**My first Arrow fic! Inspired by the latest episode "Keep Your Enemies Closer", and I'm not sure how I managed to mesh fluff and angst together but that's what happens when I write at 3 am! :D **

**Please review! You guys can follow my Tumblr at VoubleDision and I'll be posted snippets of a new Arrow story coming up! **

**Love,  
Ivy**


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